The Pixie Behind the World's Best Known Tarot Deck

Chances are you’ve seen, or even own, a Rider-Waite tarot deck. But have you ever stopped to wonder about just who is behind the deck’s iconic artwork? Tonight we delve into the life and work of little-known artist Pamela Coleman Smith. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chances are you've seen or even own a rider Waite
tarot deck.
But have you ever stopped towonder about just who is behind
the decks, iconic artworktonight?
We delve into the life and workof little known artist, Pamela
Coleman Smith.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Jen, how are you?
I'm doing well.
How are you,

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Jen?
I'm doing good.
I have some, I have some goodnews.
Oh my gosh.
What news do you have?
Well, we discussed this a fewweeks ago that I might be able
to have someone who worked withHadden Clark and corrections.
If that he would be willing tobe interviewed.
I mean the serial killer.
Oh yeah.
Hadden Clark.
The serial killer.
Oh my God.

(00:43):
Yeah, he actually, in thenineties, he had murdered, he
had murdered a young woman andhe had taken her clothes and he
had dressed up at our clothes.
And then also, I don't know ifhe was convicted or he was a
suspect in the disappearance ofa little girl.
So I spoke to this person and Itold him, I said, no pressure,
but think about it.

(01:04):
And I didn't hear back from himright away.
And then I talked to him onSunday and he said, he seemed
very interested in doing, itsaid that he, that he would be a
guest.
And, but he can't disclose toeight years because of his job.
Okay.
But we don't have to disguisehis voice or anything like that.
No, I don't think so.
I wouldn't even know.

(01:24):
We know how to do that.
So yeah.
So amazing.
So that will probably, well, itwill be our first guest and
we've talked about, you know, inthe new year we said once we had
a few episodes under our beltsthat we wanted to branch out and
you know, once in a while, um,have, have people on the show.
So this is amazing.
I'm so excited.
So yeah.
To tease our, not our nextepisode, um, I guess it'll be

(01:47):
out hopefully in January.
That is great.
So we're going to be talkingabout what's his last name
again?
Has this Hadden Clark HaddenClark.
And we're talking, we're goingto be talking with somebody who
worked with him in corrections.
Yes.
Wow.
Wow.
Good job of explaining that.
No, no, no.
I just, I was just making sure Iunderstood, like we're not
talking to Hadden Clark becauseI'm afraid that would be

(02:11):
nightmare fuel.
Yeah.
That would be, it would be like,not be talking to him.
It would be kind of like we weredoing what Jason Moss did if
people remember that episode.
Yeah.
And we wouldn't want to do that.
You just need to watch a videoof him.
He's he's super creepy.
Oh, how old of a guy is he?
I would say that he's probablyin his sixties now would be my

(02:31):
guess.
So he was what?
A party.
Yeah.
And he, he does suffer fromparanoid schizophrenia.
Okay.
So you spent really ill, buthe's creepy as.
Yeah.
Nothing against mental illness.
Um, well we're, we're equalopportunity.
Exactly.
Um, yeah, he, he sounds, well,it sounds like it'll be

(02:53):
riveting.
Like I I'm already thinking whatkinds of questions, you know,
I'm going to have to do a littleresearch on this guy so that all
knew what the heck I'm

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Talking about.
So that's my good news.
That's awesome.
Well, I guess the only good newsI have is that I have a drink in
my hand, but I'm willing to, I'mwilling to share that good news.
So you remember, I don't know.
It's been, uh, an episode or twoago.
I was really looking forward tomaking this Apple drink and it
turned out like it was literallyundrinkable.

(03:20):
It was kind of like drinkinggasoline.
So I, I valiantly tried for acouple of sips and then I'm
like, I can't, I can't do this.
And I had spent, I mean, Iprobably spent$75 at the liquor
store buying the ingredients.
So I was really off.
So I decided to try to, um, toredeem myself by making a
champagne cocktail.
So I, I have some champagne onmy glass and then I poured a

(03:42):
little bit that Apple Brandy inand added a sugar cube and a
couple of dashes of Angosturabitters.
What are you drinking?
I am having, it's very simple.
I am having a Moscow mule andthe reason why I decided to, to
make a mule because my brother,I saw him tonight and he had
brought me some ginger beer.
Oh, okay.

(04:02):
And so with a mule, I have, um,vodka and lime juice and with
the ginger beer, that sounds sogood.
And for the vodka, I use thispepper infused vodka.
Think they're really refreshingin between the lime juice and
like the, you know, the spice.
And actually I think that, that,um, black pepper vodka sounds
really intriguing.

(04:22):
That sounds really good.
I'll have to give that a try.
All right.
So tonight, um, tonight I'mgonna be talking about taro
cards and more than Terra cardsare going to be talking about a
really interesting woman.
I think you're going to befascinated by her.
Her name is Pamela ColemanSmith.
And, um, she designed along withArthur, Edward, wait, she

(04:43):
designed Porter probablyarguably the best known taro
cards on the market.
So I'm going to tell her, youactually gave me those terror
cards.
And actually, do you have thoseat work or do you have them at
home?
I have them at home.
Oh my gosh.
I'm so excited about thatbecause I have the same ones,
except I think I gave you thesmaller ones and then I have,
they're just slightly bigger,but it's the same deck.

(05:04):
And I got them actually last gotaround this time last year, I
really wanting, been wanting tolearn how to read taro, but I
just haven't, which is a shame.
I mean, we're in a pandemic.
You would think that I wouldhave found time to learn how to
read Tara, what I haven't.
So I was going to ask you, maybewe can kind of study together.
Like, would you be into that?
I would, I'm kind of afraid ofSatan, but you are.

(05:25):
Other than that, I don't thinkI'll give it my best.
I don't think tarot cards are atall CTS, but I'm going to talk
more about like what taro doesand how people think of it.
But I it's not like the Weegeeboard or anything, so I don't
think you have anything to worryabout.
Okay.
Then I'm in.
Okay, excellent.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
So what I'm going to do, I'm going to start out just
kind of talking

Speaker 3 (05:43):
About the origins of taro a little bit.
Maybe I'll be able to ease yourmind.
So you don't think that thedevil's going to take us if, if
we read tarot cards and then I'mgoing to talk about Pamela
Coleman Smith, but I'll startout with the taro taro cards,
actually date from mid centuryEurope today.
When we think of Terra cards, wethink of telling your fortune or
divining what's in the future.

(06:03):
But back in the mid 15thcentury, people just use them as
playing cards.
I think they call them Terrellor something.
Um, they seem to be reallypopular in Italy, but other
places in Europe as well.
Um, and it wasn't until the late18th century that some of the
decks began to be used fordivination or fortunes.
And really the whole, I guess,reason for being behind Terra

(06:25):
cards is they're just a tool tokind of help the person who's
reading them, get a sense ofmeaning and figure out like a
sense of meaning or direction intheir life.
The person that's reading them,or I guess if you're reading
your own, so you would belooking for your own, but let's
say I'm reading them for you.
We're trying to like interrupt.
Like I'm interpreting the cardsin the sense of like their
meaning in your life.

(06:46):
But I think you can do either,so you can read your own or you
can, can have them read for you.
I'm not, I just want to kind ofput out a caveat that I'm not an
expert on taro at all.
I don't know a lot.
I really want to know more.
And I feel like when I got thesecards and I got a book that went
with them, actually that wentwith Rider-Waite deck, which I'm
going to be talking abouttonight.
It's so complicated.
Like every card has so muchsymbolism you could spend, you

(07:09):
could literally spend your wholelife studying tarot cards and
still not know everything you'vedone it.
Right.
You've had yours read before.
Right?
Brian and I were first dating inPhiladelphia.
There was this line out on thestreet that said$5 reading by Ms
.
Tilly.
We went in and I think I forgotwhat she did.
I can't remember if she didcards or if she'd read our poem,
we'll have to see if heremembers.

(07:30):
But so we went in separately andI think she read each one for
five bucks.
This wasn't the night.
It was like a bargain basementprice.
And she was like, she told me,she's like, sometimes you'll
feel your man love you, loveyou.
So then he, Brian goes in and no, she gets his reading.
And so we go out and he's like,well, what'd she tell you?
And I tell him and he's like, Ohmy God.

(07:51):
She said the same thing to me.
So she literally exactly thesame thing.
I'm totally fascinated by it.
And I would really like to go toa good terror reader, but I feel
like it's kind of hard in that.
Like how do you find somebodywho's kind of the real deal?
Because like I said, there's somuch to know and it's really, I
think at its heart, it's reallyabout being able to tell a story
and being able to be imaginativeand inventive.

(08:13):
And there may be someserendipity in the cards, you
know, sometimes things cometogether and they make sense.
So I'll talk more about that ina little bit too.
But the deck that I'm going tobe talking about tonight is
known as the writer await DEC orthe writer await Smith deck,
which is really, it would be mypreference just to call it the
RWS deck, because that includesSmith's last name, the woman who

(08:33):
did the artwork for the cards.
And sometimes her name gets leftout of it.
Of course, because women alwaysget left out.
Writer is actually the publisherof the cards.
Wait, was the guy who did all ofthe meaning kind of divided the
cards, men.
And then Smith is her last namein the writer, weight Smith
deck.
There are cups which representwater Pentacles, which represent
earth ones, which represent fireand swords, which stand for air.

(08:58):
So they correspond to the fourelements and they mean more than
just that they have thatelemental thing going on too.
And in every taro deck, thereare 78 cards and each suit, each
of those has 14 cards and 10 ofthem are numbered cards, you
know, like in regular cards.
So it goes from ACE all the wayup to 10.
So it goes from eight to 10 andthey call these the PIP cards,

(09:18):
PIP.
And then there are also fourface cards and they also call it
the minor Arcana.
And then there's another set ofcards in the deck.
And it's 21 cards, whichincludes a Trump suit and a
single card known as the fulland then this 22 cards that is
called the major Arcana.
So I guess there are 22 cards inthat the other cards, the PIP
cards, there are 56 in that.

(09:40):
So the Trump suit, like they'rekind of the main figures that
kind of the main, I guess,themes and stuff of the Carter
and the major Arcana.
So I was mentioning before that,I think Tara was really about
interpretation.
And I think that every reader,probably even though like
there's basic things to knowabout the cards, like you have
to kind of learn what some ofthe symbols represent and all
about how you interpret them.

(10:00):
So if I do a spread of cards,I'm probably going to see them
differently than you are,although you and I, we have a
lot in common, so who knows,maybe Arthur, my interpretations
would be similar, but you know,I think every reader brings
something different to it.
And there's this Italian writerit'll lo Calveno who said, this
is his quote, the taro is amachine for constructing
stories.
And I thought that was a reallygood way of kind of thinking

(10:21):
about what tarot does.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah.
I basically had zero knowledgeof terror, but you know, as we
started to learn a little bitmore, when you got the cards and
we talked about them, this hasbeen, what, when did you get
them?
Like a year or two

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Christmas?
Yeah.
It was like last Christmas.
So almost a year ago.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
And um, it, it made more sense to me as we went
along that yeah, it's, it's upto interpretation, you know,
there's no hard and fast rule toit.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah.
Which is what I love the act ofinterpretation that you read a
work of literature and yeah, youhave to, you have to be true to
what the, what is in the text.
But within that, you know, youcan have a million different
interpretations.
And the way I read that andrespond to something is probably
going to be really differentthan the way somebody else will
read and respond to it.
And I'm going to see stuff thatyou're not going to see and then

(11:06):
vice versa.
So I think the same is true oftaro.
It's just, it's like a text,even though it's just, it's just
a card and there's so much onthere to interpret.
I just, that gets me so excitedwhen I think about it.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
So cool.
What I look at the design onthose cards, it looks like, and
mind you, I know absolutelynothing about art, but it looks
like kind of Picasso ish.
Yeah.
Picasso.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
Yeah.
That's interesting.
So I read this article onlineactually this afternoon, cause I
was thinking a little bit moreabout how to explain, like what
taro is.
There is an article called tarotis story, all story by this
woman named Rachel Paula, who isapparently like a really great
tarot reader.
And she said that what reallyfascinated her about taro when
she first came across the cardsfor the first time was not the

(11:48):
idea that they could predictthings or tell a future, but she
was just fascinated by thecards.
And she said, this is her quotethat each card seemed a frozen
moment in a story.
And so you're kind of enteringlike mid-story and you pick it
up and you sort of jumped intothe story and like, depending on
like what the spread of cardsis, one card may impact the
meaning of another.
And so she also said that tarotcan be interpreted on different

(12:12):
levels.
So, you know, you can look at itfrom just kind of what's going
on in your personal life tolarger spiritual teachings.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So I think it's kind of, again,it's kind of what you bring to
it.
And she says something else thatreally, that really struck me.
And she said that it's notnecessarily, she doesn't think
of it as the cards havingintrinsic, meaning it's not like

(12:34):
it's more like what we bring toit through our interpretation
and our interaction, which,which I think is cool, which is,
I think that's a real reason whyit would be so fun to do it.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
I've always had an interest I think, or maybe when
I was younger, but I was alwaysafraid of it because at that
time, at that age, or even upuntil the last couple of years,
I would think, watch me get thecard of death.
Like it was the worst thing inthe world to get the card of
death itself.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Wouldn't you say that?
Because he would ask me earliertonight if anybody had ever read
my taro.
And I said, no, but I hadtotally forgotten until you just
said that in college, there wasa sky my freshman year named
Rodney.
And I remember being in the dormin the boys dorm and he had a
deck of tarot cards.
And I remember, I remember beingafraid of the very same cause
when he explains what are someof the cards I was afraid that
were coming.
And he kind of said, well, ifthat comes up, it doesn't mean

(13:20):
death.
You know, it means, I forgetwhat he said,

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Well, not to be sexist.
I mean, we've talked about thisbefore with seances and Weegee
boards that usually it's kind oflike a girl thing.
I get really into that sort ofthing.
So I knew he was gay.
So I don't know if that, youknow, you might have some gay
people that would really takeoffense to that, but I get, you

(13:43):
know what I mean?
But that's okay.
I'm just teasing you.
All right.
So now I'm going to talk,

Speaker 3 (13:53):
I'm going to tell you a little bit about Pamela
Coleman Smith.
And I think you already know alittle bit about her because you
are a wonderful daughter, gaveme a book last Christmas called
Pamela Coleman Smith.
The untold story.
So Pamela Coleman Smith was bornin 1878 and she was born in
London, two American parents.
And both of her parents werefrom prominent New York
families.

(14:13):
It's important to know that in1889.
So when she was about 11 yearsold, the family moved to Jamaica
because her dad took a job therein while she was in Jamaica, she
was really, really taken withthe folklore and just absorbed
all of this Jamaican folklore.
And that would impact her forthe rest of her life.
She was known as a storytelleras well as being an artist.
Um, she did a lot of cool stuffin her life, but she would tell

(14:35):
these dude like these one womanshows for her friends and
perform these Jamaican folktales and stuff.
And she had said later that shereally learned like what a story
was and how to tell a story.
Even in her art, from the talesthat she heard when she was in
Jamaica,

Speaker 1 (14:49):
How old was she?
When she moved there?
She was only 11.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
And actually she only stayed there until she was 15,
but they were very formativeyears, I guess, for her it was
something that, that reallystuck with her.
So when she was 15, she moved toBrooklyn, New York because she
was accepted at the PrattInstitute, which was a leading
art school.
And she stayed there for fouryears.
She left in 1897.
She didn't actually earn adegree.
I'm not exactly sure whathappened and why that was.

(15:13):
But she went on to work as anillustrator after she left
school.
And she was kind of back andforth.
She spent a lot of time inEngland, but she was also in New
York for awhile, but she did alot of design for the theater.
And one thing she did, and therewere pictures of this in the
book.
She even created this miniaturetheater and would have like
these plays in her miniaturetheater.

(15:33):
And she would design all of thesets and come up with all of the
characters.
And she had a lot of, a lot offriends who are actresses,
including the actress, Ellen,Terry, I don't know if that name
rings a bell for you.
She was famously the mistress ofCharles Dickens.
And I'm just thinking, as I saythat hell terrible.
The like the thing that I knewEllen Terry for was who she was
basically.
And not like who she is in herown.

(15:54):
Right.
I'm ashamed of myself andashamed of history for that, but
they were good friends and itwas actually Ellen Terry who
gave him the nickname pixie.
So snip also known as pixie dida lot of things in her life
other than taro, but it's tarothat she's best remembered for,
but I want to spend some timejust talking a little bit about
some of the other stuff she did.
Cause it was so cool.

(16:14):
So she actually illustrated BramStoker's final novel, which was
the layer of the white worm.
Really?
Yeah, she did.
Um, there were some pictures ofthat in the book as well.
And she illustrated a book ofpoetry by WB eights and she
designed posters for the women'ssuffrage movement.
She was part of this thingcalled the suffrage[inaudible],
which was a collector or acollective of female

(16:35):
illustrators who did artpromoting, promoting women's
suffrage.
And then, I mean, she was reallycreative for her whole life.
So she, there was never a timewhen she wasn't working.
And I read that she reallyworked up almost to the time
that she died.
But at one point she had her ownprinting press.
She called it the green sheetpress.
She used it to publish andpromote the work of other women,

(16:56):
artists and writers.
And that lasted for a couple ofyears, really before her time,
she really was like, it was, Iwas reading about her.
I'm like, yes, she would havebeen our friend.
We would have like, and she wasvery into like women's community
really into just promotingwomen's women's art women's wear
.
I didn't read anything.
So there's no mention she wasnever married.

(17:16):
She never had children.
And there was no mention of herhaving like relationships,
intimate relationships withwomen either.
But I did read something,something on the web, in the
writer.
I can't remember.
I can't remember where I sawthis, but the writer kind of
said, think kind of lookingbetween the lines.
She was probably lesbian, but wejust don't know that for a fact.
No, we don't know.

(17:37):
They did mention a good friendof hers.
My thought, well maybe therecould have been something there
because they lived together fora while before we hopped on
tonight, I was reading abouther.
And I read that again.
Like you said, reading betweenthe, she was probably gay,

Speaker 1 (17:50):
But she had the same companion for 30 years.
And was that Nora?
I think Nora, somebody, I don'tremember the person's name, but
so that she had a two isbelieved to be her partner or
life partner.
And they had been together forlike 30 years or something or
over 30.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
I mean, regardless of what's what is, or isn't going
on in the bedroom?
That's a true partnership.
Like that's, that's arelationship in any term,

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Right?
Like they lived together, right?
Or was it not?

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Hi, I'm actually they, so they ran a house for a
vacation home for priests forawhile.
If we're thinking of thecompanion and I have her name
here somewhere, her name wasNora Lake.
And she was described as herlongtime friend.
So yeah, they, they ran avacation home for priests in
Cornwall.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
It's probably the same person and that's one of
the things that I came across.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
So one really impressive thing that happened
in 1907, the famousphotographer, Alfred Stieglitz,
which you may know him better asthe lover of Georgia O'Keeffe,
which makes me happy.
Cause we can, we can sort ofmake it sound like all Alfred
didn't live with beat GeorgiaO'Keeffe's lovers.
But anyway, he gave anexhibition of her paintings in
his gallery.
And I think she was the onlywoman's work that he exhibited

(19:01):
there.
And he said he admired hersynesthetic sensibility.
And she had this.
She, if you ever heard ofsynesthesia, no, it's this thing
where like one sense sort ofstands in for the other.
So it would be like if I wasable to smell a painting or I'm
able to like see music.
So it's where like your senseskind of get crossed and people

(19:23):
believe like looking back thatshe probably had synesthesia
because she did something whichwe'll talk about in the end.
But she, she did these musicalpaintings that were really
interesting.
So how she ended up beinginvolved with tarot cards, which
like I said, is the thing she's,she's most known for in 1901,
she joined the hermetic order ofthe golden Dawn and that was an
esoteric society.
And they were devoted to thepractice of magic cultism

(19:45):
religious studies and mysticismand Yates was part of that.
He was part of that.
And then it later broke into twofactions.
There was like one that was morefocused on myth and kind of the
esoteric.
And then the other faction, morefocused on Judeo-Christian, um,
origins, like including like ourtheory and stuff on the legend
of King Arthur and all of that.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
It's funny that we're talking about this because my
brother last night when we werehanging out together and he
brought up that hermetic orderand I'm looking at, do you know
about all this?
Yeah.
And then I remembered Masonicsymbolism and my brother's a
Freemason.
Oh my gosh.
That's so interesting.
And I think that's

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Masonic stuff that goes back.
God, that goes back so far.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
It does.
I still want us to try to, tojoin the Freemasons down here.
We should do it.
Oh, we shouldn't do it.
I haven't don't have any qualmsat all.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
It's some weird.
Actually this was some weird tothe hermetic order of the golden
Dawn, but I think it would havebeen super fun to be part of it.
So she actually went, there wassomething in London called the
ISIS Urania temple of the goldenDawn.
So she went there, there are allthese different levels of
membership.
And I think she only made it upto like the second level of
membership, but she did meetthis guy named Arthur, Edward

(20:55):
wait there.
And it was he, um, thatcommissioned her in 1909 to
create the taro deck.
So in terms of, of Smith's life,sadly her work found little
commercial success, especiallyafter world war one.
I was talking to my husbandabout this cause he's, uh,
teaches English and he wantedhis areas is like the literature
of the early 20th century, youknow, modern world war.

(21:17):
And I was like, you know, why,why was world war one?
Like, it, it seems like therewas this dividing line before
the war and after the war,everything that was braced is
high art.
Like after the war, it was justlike kind of torn down.
And I think it's because the warwas like, it was just, it was
such a cataclysmic, an awfulevent get kind of just sucked
all the meaning out of life.

(21:37):
And so it's like artists kind ofhad to start from the beginning,
like trying to create meaningagain.
So anyway, Smith, she struggledfinancially really for just
about her whole life.
But I tended to get the sensethat like, it was a bad life for
her.
I got the sense that she wasalways fulfilled artistically,
even though she didn't have alot of money.
And I mentioned that for a time,she ran that vacation home for

(21:57):
priests or companion or herfriend.
And uh, you know, she justsurrounded herself with a
company of women really for herwhole life.
She died in 1951 in Cornwall, ina place called, I don't know if
I'm going to pronounce thiscorrectly.
It looks like booed B U D E andher grave.
This was really sad to me.
Her grave site is unknown and itsaid she was likely buried in a

(22:20):
Popper's grave.
She is thought to be in, inCornwall.
And they, they did say a name ofa cemetery where she likely is,
but nobody knows like where inthe cemetery she is.
And actually after her death,all of her belongings were
auctioned off to pay off herdebts.
Didn't she convert toCatholicism.
She did.
And I can't believe I neglectedto mention that.
I think she converted reallyearly in her life, like 1911.

(22:42):
So she was what about 30, 30,one 32 at that time.
And I got a sense thatCatholicism, like it gave her
like a solid foundation.
She was buffeted by financialinsecurity and all of this, but
she felt like very rooted inher, I guess, in her faith and
Catholicism filled with likeritual and exactly.
And I think that was maybe a bigpart of why she was so drawn to

(23:06):
it, appealing to her.
Exactly.
She was really, she was afascinating woman because she
knows she didn't fulfill thosetypical roles that women did.
Like she didn't marry and havekids.
And she was kind ofuncategorizable people talked
about how she was even hard tojust categorize physically.
Like sometimes she was mistakenfor being Japanese or
African-American, but like, sheseemed to like kind of straddle,

(23:28):
like some gender.
Like she, again, she didn'tfulfill that typical female
role.
Class-wise like, she kind of ranwith a lot of like upper crusty
people, but she herself wealthy,even, even though she came from
money.
So I'm not sure really whathappened to the family money and
all of that Arthur ransom whodid a lot of illustration of
fairytales.
I've seen some of his stuff, buthe referred to her, he described

(23:50):
her as a strange littlecreature.
And he said that when they weretalking one time, she described
herself as, and this is what shesaid, a God daughter of a witch
and his sister to a yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
It's like super,

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Super cool.
It seems like pixie was theperfect name for her.
So anyway, I guess Arthur, wait,he got his idea for making a new
taro deck.
He came across some older callmanuscripts apparently.
And I don't know, I don't knowwhat those manuscripts were, but
I was curious about maybe whathe saw.
So it seemed like they workedreally well together.
Like they were a good artisticteam and weight was responsible

(24:25):
for coming up with the majorconcepts and the structure of
the cards and kind of theiroverall symbolic there's
symbolic meanings.
And it's interesting because Iguess traditionally in like most
other tarot decks, the numbercards are not very detailed, but
in the rider Waite Smith deck,they're extremely detailed.
So they're, they're really, asmuch of an interpretive card is

(24:45):
like all the major Arcana cards.
And I got the impression thatbefore that deck like that
wasn't true.
So that was one of the, that wasone of the major changes.
And one of the majorcontributions that they made to
taro Wade apparently regarded,uh, Smith as having psychic
abilities, which was one of thereasons that he wanted to work
with her.
I think that might've been alittle bit linked to her
synesthesia too.

(25:07):
And the deck is based on, um,Judeo-Christian mysteries rather
than a cult magic.
So see, that's another reasonyou don't have to worry about
the devil.
I know, I know we can, we canrelieve.
So wait said that the Trumpcards or the major Arconic were
related to Western Christianmysticism, especially the
Arthurian legend of the Holygrail.

(25:27):
And interestingly, I was readingthat the grail quest was also
something that was associatedwith women's suffrage because
women were questing and theywere on this, on this quest for
political, social, spiritualequality.
So there are all these layers toeverything I never would have
guessed that I know I wouldn'thave either.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
And also all these people to be that run in the
same circles like Stoker andeights and Coleman and actresses
and actors during that time thatwere associated with that
hermetic order.
Yes.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
It really captured my imagination too.
There was just this Renaissanceof, of thought so much was
changing socially.
Like people were kind ofsloughing off Victorianism and
you know, it was more likethinking more in terms of
opening up to new ideas.
I think if I could pick any timeto live, I think it would
between like 1895 and 1913.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
I don't know if I would want to, um, where you
like all the Victorian age, whatis your fascination with that?

Speaker 3 (26:25):
I've just always been drawn to that time, but I don't,
I think I would have wanted tokind of going into the Edwardian
era because it was hard to be aVictorian woman.
I probably would've ended up asa scholar remade or something,
or like Jack, the ripper victimI would have wanted, I would've
liked to have lived a life likeColeman Smith.
Is she just, she was part of allthese things going around her.

(26:46):
Like she had friends in theseplaces and she was working on
these things and the world waschanging and she was part of it.
I just think she was not yourtypical, like I think living,
living her life would have beenincredible.
And I would have gotten to wearlike a corset and crinolines,
all those things.
Exactly.
So wait, who did the structureof the cards?

(27:08):
And every card had a surfacemeaning and a meaning that
couldn't really be captured inwords, it was almost that
intuitive sense.
There's this cool quote fromSmith where she's talking about
how you should interpret art.
And she says, use your wits, useyour eyes.
Perhaps you use your physicaleyes too much and only are the
mask find eyes within.
Look for the door, into theunknown country.

(27:29):
Someone's giving instructionsfor how you should interpret
taro to right use your innereye.
The other cool thing about hercards is that she uses a lot of
androgynous figures in genderrole reversals.
For example, the, the full cardhas that going on.
She would sometimes copy notcopy, but she would use her
friends, some of her artists andactors, friends as models.

(27:50):
If you look at the cards,there's one that looks like
Ellen, Terry, I think it's thequeen of the wands looks like
Ellen.
Terry people think it wasmodeled after her.
And then there was Ellen EllenTerry's daughter.
I can't remember her name rightoff the top of my head, but
there's another card that lookedlike her.
And she was, I think, a prettywell-known lesbian herself, not
Ellen Terry brewing daughter.
Her name was Edith something eatat the Craig, I think.

(28:11):
And there's a sense that, youknow, I talked before about how,
how Smith's like when she spentthose years in Jamaica as a
young girl, she learned how totell a story.
And there's a sense, I think,in, in her cards that she's,
she's telling a story in hercard.
When you look at them, it's kindof like, you stumbled into
something that's alreadyhappening, which makes total
sense when you think aboutinterpretation, because it's not

(28:32):
like it's just a fixed kind ofimage.
It's like there's stuff going onand you kind of have to fill in
the gaps.
I wonder how those cars becamethe most popular cards.
That's that's a good question.
Uh, her name doesn't come up.
I mean, I studied a lot ofmodernist literature when I was
in grad school, but it's weirdthat like she did all this work,
but she's the reason we, we knowher.

(28:53):
If we know her is because ofthese taro cards.
It's just the craziest thing itis you think like, because it
was this, so Ryder was apublisher.
I think of maybe the writer thatcompany published the first
edition or what, but it waseventually picked up by like USA
games and something.
I think that's, and there, thepublisher of that book I was
telling you about by StuartKaplan, gimme you think about

(29:14):
how many taro cards were sold,how many Rider-Waite Smith decks
are sold every year?
Like the woman would have beenso wealthy.
Has she lived in age?
Yeah.
It's just so sad that she diedwith no money

Speaker 1 (29:25):
In an unmarked grave.
Exactly.
I knew what I was going tomention

Speaker 3 (29:30):
On her death certificate.
It was put Spencer

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Independent means.
Wow, wow.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Of that as amazing.
So I think unless you had a,really like a socially advanced
man and you were straightmarriage just would have been
insufferable, I think muchbetter to be a spinster of
independent means if you, I

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Am of the belief that she was probably lesbian.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
I got that strong feeling as well.
I think like if you, especially,if you think of like lesbian,
like whether, whether that meanssex or not, like she just like
the relationships that matter toher, what relationships with
women, women didn't sound likeshe had any meaningful relation.
I mean, she had that artisticpartnership with Arthur, Edward
wait, but primary relationshipswere female relationships.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
She and her partner, they, they ran basically the
equivalent of, um, a gay BNB forpriests or priests.
It's not great.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
That is so great.
Oh my God.
I'd like to go to that littlevillage in Cornwall.
I mean, just to see where shelived and you know, London's
another place I want to go.
And I don't know if, if thatplace, um, you know, where the
ISIS Uranian temple is.
I don't know.
Like if you could track downlike what part of the city that
was in and yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Do you remember, or this might've been just a few
years before your time, butthere was, um, superhero, miss,
not a cartoon, but a show.
And it was based on ISIS.
No, I don't think it was a bighit, but I made quite the
impression on me and this woman,she would turn into ISIS.

(31:01):
There would be these imagery,the Gazelles running, and it's
ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
We didn't see that.
So with that, I'm in like theseventies or the eighties

Speaker 1 (31:11):
And the name of the series was the secrets of ISIS.
That's crazy.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
It's like wonder woman in some ways, because
that's so crazy that youremember that you were
hilarious.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah.
That really jumped out at me.
I was like really into it at thetime he must've been, he must've
been in

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Consolable after it.
Didn't after it didn't come back

Speaker 1 (31:31):
For it only to be on for a year.
I sure do.
Remember.
I remember it really well andlike wonder woman, you know,
that was on forever.
That's really interesting.
Maybe I'll do an episode on thatshed, although maybe it'll be a
different kind of episode.
I just want to do that onealone, an adult, an adult.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
So nature.
And um, the four elements were,they were a prominent feature in
a lot of her work.
She also did some paintings thatare called visionary paintings,
which I'll end with here in aminute, but a couple more things
about the taro.
So, um, in her lifetime Smithnever discussed what her cards
might mean.
So there's, there's one lastlittle story I just want to
leave you with.
So we kind of finished up thetarot cards, but I mentioned she

(32:14):
also did a lot of paintings andshe did these visionary
paintings.
Um, and she had her first visionon Christmas day in 1900 while
she was at her good friend,Ellen Terry's house.
And she was there and they werelistening to Bach and she just
had this mystical experience andshe described something like a
shutter clicking.
And then she said she was ableto see through the small

(32:34):
aperture.
It sounds like a camera, the wayshe describes it inside of her
head.
And she described what she saw,and this is what she said.
She saw dancing and frolicking,little elephant people with the
wind blowing through their hairand a billowing, their dresses,
not like something I would see.
I'm like, I am feeling thissister when she said that after

(32:57):
that point, she would go on toattend different classical
concerts.
And in a single concert, shemight make as many as 30
drawings during a performance,she just sit there like
sketching the whole time.
That's amazing.
You know, later she would, Iguess she would refine them and
turn them into paintings.
And she had to draw really fastbecause when the music ended,
she, her visions ended.
So in her, one of her friendswas WC in the famous French

(33:20):
composer.
And he said that her paintingswere quote, his dreams made
visible, which I really loved.
But the last thing I want to endon just struck me as so funny.
So the German composer, Wagner,she said that when she listened
to Wagner, she didn't seeanything.
She really hated what she said.
She said, when I listened toWagner, I feel so full of rage

(33:40):
that I want to crack the headsof people together, like nuts.
Oh my God hated Wagner.
And she was like, she didn't doany drawings of his music as
this always kind of described asbeing very heavy and like
ponderous.
And I just think she'sfascinating.
Like she did her own thing.
She was

Speaker 2 (33:56):
March to the beat of her own drummer.
And you know, she's left at hisleftist, these amazing cards
that are probably in so manypeople's houses and they don't
even know.
They don't even know who she is.
So, yeah.
So I think we should toast toher.
She was quite the woman.
I'm like quite enamored of her,right.
To be on the law to pixie.
Pamela, thank you to everyonewho listens.

(34:19):
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(35:34):
[inaudible].